Mémoires d’un Fou [Memoirs of a Madman] is an incomplete and unpolished autobiographical novel which Flaubert wrote in the autumn and winter of 1838. He was 16 and only beginning to understand his own skills and interests as a writer. He had abandoned work on the text by January 1839 when he passed the manuscript to a friend. The manuscript remained out of public knowledge until it was transcribed and published in La Revue Blanche in 1900. Thereafter the manuscript disappeared into a private collection. Its current whereabouts are unknown.
Mémoires d’un Fou was inspired during the Flaubert family summer holiday at the resort of Trouville on the Normandy coast in 1838. Flaubert found himself looking back to the summer of 1836 when the family had holidayed at the same resort and he had met...
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Citation: Clark, Robert. "Mémoires d'un fou". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 23 March 2023 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=41169, accessed 14 December 2025.]
